I Guess I'll Make it a Triple Feature

 

A week ago, I reviewed The Bonnie Parker Story, which was directed by William Witney and starred Jack Hogan. A few years ago, I reviewed Cat Burgler, which was also directed by Witney and starred Jack Hogan.

So now I feel obligated to complete a Witney/Hogan triple feature with a review of the 1959 movie Paratroop Command. 

This one actually shares three cast members with The Bonnie Parker Story--Hogan, Ken Lynch and Richard Bakalyn. In this case, Bakalyn is the lead character--a paratrooper named Charlie.

The film opens with a combat drop into North Africa. Scattered around at first, the Americans gradually regroup as they run into German soldiers. At one point, a soldier called the Cowboy mistakenly thinks Charlie has frozen up. Charlie loses touch with the rest of his unit for a while.

When he shows up again, he shoots and kills Cowboy, mistaking him for a German. You can see exactly what happens in the clip below. Though a tragedy, it is clearly an accident and Charlie can't reasonably be blamed. But Cowboy has had time to say that Charlie had frozen. Cowboy's best friend Ace (Hogan) is convinced Charlie murdered Cowboy to keep his cowardice a secret. Several others in the unit, at the very least, don't quite trust Charlie.

{On a side note: one doesn't expect complete realism in most movies, but notice in the scene below that Cowboy--a trained soldier--points a live weapon at a fellow soldier. That's a dumb thing to do, even in jest. Notice that he's not even observing proper trigger discipline. To be fair, though, in the adreneline rush that follows what he just accomplished in knocking out the German bunker, maybe this is understandable if not excusable.}

The lieutenant believes Charlie and gives him a chance to transfer to another unit and start fresh. But by this time, the story has spread across the entire division. Charlie would have to transfer out of the paratroops. And he won't do that. All his life, he's felt he was a screw-up. Joining an elite unit is his best chance to accomplish something. He won't give up his chance now.

The second act of the movie takes place in Sicily and involves a well-choreographed fight set around a farmhouse. There's a couple of really effective moments here, such as when a haystack behind which Germans are hiding is set on fire and the scene actually manages to generate sympathy for the bad guys when they run out with their uniforms blazing. During this fight, Charlie is ordered to stand down when he has a moment to help because he's still not trusted by the others.

The last act is set at Salerno. The unit is tasked with finding a concentration of German tanks and reporting their position to the Air Force. The unit is pinned down and takes casualties. The lieutenant has spotted the tanks and has the radio, but he's wounded and unable to move. Charlie has the generator needed to power the radio. To get the generator to the radio, he has to cross an open road seeded with land mines while under fire from the Germans.

Charlie is finally given a chance to accomplish something worthwhile. 

 Like the fight at the farm house, this final action scene is well-choreographed and honestly surprised me in who got killed and wounded. 

There are a few weaks points. The banter between two characters (the Sergeant and Pigpen) fails to generate the laughs it's supposed to. The low budget shows in that every American has a Tommy gun and every German has an MP 40 (probably what the studio had available).  A few M1s or carbines mixed in would have been nice. Also, we hear ricochets, but never see one, implying that the movie's budget didn't include squibs. 

Even so, Paratroop Command is a good movie, with a strong cast and Witney's direction lifting it over the weak points in the script and its low budget. 

Over the past three weeks, I've reviewed three B-movies--the first two because they were originally released as a double-feature, then the third because it shared an actor and a director with one of those. Then I connected this with a fourth B-movie I review a few years ago. Now, I must resist the urge to expend another Thursday post next week on the movie that played with Paratroop Command as a double-feaure: another WWII flick titled Submarine Seahawk.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm not going to resist the urge at all. Join me next week for a review of Submarine Seahawk.

By the way, Jack Hogan isn't the only actor in this movie who would later appear regularly in the TV series Combat! The German captain we meet during the farm house fight is played by Paul Busch, who popped up on Combat! dozens of times as a German soldier. Not the same one, since he usually got killed in each episode in which he appeared. Busch was a 2nd generation American, but his mom was from Germany and he spoke the language fluently. Playing Germans in WWII films and TV shows pretty much represented a steady paycheck for him during the 1960s.